June 9, 2016 AT 6:00 am

You’ve probably never seen lawn mowers anything like this. While for most of us lawn mowers just need to make sure that our backyard doesn’t turn into a jungle, municipalities, plants and national parks need remote-controlled mowers with extreme power to overcome obstacles and slopes, which also don’t cause erosion. And where there is a tailored need for solutions, 3D printing fits the bill perfectly.

Back in the 90s, John Wright came up with the idea of building remote-controlled lawnmowers. He combined a Power Wheels Barbie jeep, a push mower and a remote control car in a brave DIY project, explaining “Needless to say it never went far and never mowed the first blade of grass”.

After the housing market collapse in 2008, John decided to get back to work on this project. “Only this time, I had Google and YouTube at my fingertips.” After an R&D phase of nearly four years on a shoestring budget, John and his remote mowers business, Summit Mowers, are getting their feet wet with production of the world’s most advanced slope mowing solutions. In 2016 alone, John and his team already sold 30 units. And what started from a Barbie jeep now looks more like one epic monster lawnmower. These beasts will mow anything that comes in their way and have no problem traversing extreme 40 to 50 degree slopes from site to site thanks to their exceptionally wide rubber tracks.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!